Immigrant Economy Research Articles

Les Chinois de Paris depuis le début du siècle. Présence urbaine et activités économiques

The Evolution of the Urban Presence and the Economical Activities of the Chinese in Paris Yu-Sion LIVE The creation of enterprises by Chinese in Paris is an old phenomenon which goes back to the first moments of their immigration at the beginning of the XXth century. In the economic field, this immigration is characterized by the visibility of its presence in some neighbourhoods within the linguistic groups (Wenzhou, Qingtian, Cantonese, Shanghaians,...) are inclined towards reconstitute for carry on specific profession: trade of chinese trinkets, hawking of merchandises, chiropodist, catering trade, shop selling fancy, etc. This study apprehends the endogenous and/or exogenous factors susceptible to favour the expansion and/or the decline of the Chinese activities and of « Chinese » neighbourhoods, having something to do with the migratory flows. Writing our analysis (through the origin, the development and the issue of activities), we'll show that an ethnic economy doesn't live in a closed circuit and that its viability is sitting, in most cases, under the socio-cultural and economical influence of the global society or under some juridical measures regulating the trade of activities or even under Worldwide political events, etc. In the past, the extinction of market ofgoods and services led to the dislocation and/ or to the disappearance of Chinese professional activities in the Parisian neighbourhoods. Thus, the growth of the Chinese immigrant economy is not always linked with the growth of the Sino-French population. The small demographic size of an ethnic group is not inevitably a handicap to the extension of an ethnic economy.

The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation

Chinese hand laundries have been a fixture of America's urban landscape for over one hundred years. Yet little is publicly known about the workings of this familiar institution which originated shortly after Chinese immigrants had started to arrive in some numbers in California in the 1850s. At that time the Chinese worked in a wide range of occupations, hand laundries being one of them. But with the faltering of the Western economy and as European immigration to the United States mounted, the tide of anti-Chinese sentiment swelled, which culminated in violent evictions of the Chinese from West Coast cities and in the imposition of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The laundry became one of the few occupations in which Chinese were able to continue to work. This book is the definitive scholarly study of Chinese laundries and of those who worked in them in the United States. Sio's work, researched in the 1930s, was completed as a dissertation in 1953 at the University of Chicago's School of Sociology. It is an intimate insider's look at the life and work of Chinese hand laundry workers in Chicago, and is one of the most insightful participant observation studies of this kind. Dr. Siu, himself the son of a laundryman, introduces in it the key sociological concept of the sojourner and explores the whole nature of immigrant economies. Considered a classic work by students of overseas Chinese and Asian American studies, The Chinese Laundryman is also a landmark in the study of ethnic occupations and in the social and cultural history of the immigrant in America. Vividly descriptive and highly readable, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the ethnic and the urban experience in America.